As I am writing this, there is less than one week left in
Swaziland, and Africa for that matter, and then we are off to Eastern Europe.
Next month we will be in Ukraine and our last month we will be in Moldova, two
of the poorest countries in all of Europe. We also have under two months to go
before we fly back into the States. Seriously, where does the time go?
Our time in Africa has of course not gone according to my
expectations. The first two months we have lived in relatively good conditions
and had very few things to complain about, however ministry wasn’t necessarily
on fire like I envisioned Africa being. There were moments, but overall a
little disorganized and not my favorite months compared to Asia.
The ministry this month has been great and exactly what I needed.
We are in these beautiful mountains and surrounded my love. I have been longing
for emotional attachment and a brokeness when I left the country. We are
working at an orphanage with about 60 kids and they are a joy to love on. My big
project this month has been helping remodel the pig pens. In case you didn’t
know, pigs are absoultely disgusting and repulsive creatures. Trust me it is
way worse than you could imagine. It’s been smelly and hard, but we are never
short of work and projects here, and feel very much needed.
We have all labored hard, whether that’s redoing the baby house
storeroom, organizing receipts, painting a mural, school construction, pig
pens, etc. However, one of the worst things about Africa has been all the wildfires
going on everywhere. Story time!
One night there was a huge wildfire circling very close to the
compound, but thankfully the firebreaks prevented the fire from coming too
close to the buildings and burning them down, but the fire spread all the way
to the community school nearby. That’s when all of us were called into
firefighter mode (not the ministry you ever expect, but clearly anything goes
this year) in ordr to save the school from burning down. I had walked away
earlier and had no idea this was going on, until everyone came back and told
me. They said they were wondering where I was because they figured I would jump
right in the middle and try to put out the flames. After several hours of
beating the flames down with branches along a line of swirling fire, everyone
came back, but then the fire sparked again, and thankfully I was ready to go
this time, and got a little action in. The fire came as close as 15 feet to the
school in certain part, but finally subsided.
A few days roll by, and we are thinking that the fires are done
with and there couldn’t possibly be anything left to be burned. After church I
went to take a group of kids on a hike to a waterfall, and had a blast swimming
with them and playing around. A few hours pass and as we are walking back, I
notice there is smoke everywhere. Sure enough, another wildfire had started and
this one came extremely close to where we were staying. People had to be woken
up from their naps and told to grab all their stuff as quickly as possible and
evacuate. The flames burned all the perimeter fence down and came within a
couple feet of catching some of our houses on fire. Once again, I was the only
person to miss all of this chaos happening. The fire had passed al the
firebreaks set in place and nearly encircled the area where our houses were at.
Who would have thought out of all the things in Africa that
wildfires would be our biggest fear? God definitely had his hand upon us though
and the only we thing we suffered from was smoke inhalation, ashes all in our
rooms, and headaches in the morning. So, thanks for your prayers (especially my
mom), I was kept safe and far away from both fires. Also, in Nepal, I was the
only one out of our group of 10 that wasn’t tossed from the raft when we hit a
rapids wrong. Everyone else went for a swim! I’m just saying some of those
prayers are definitely being answered.
Keep up the prayers for these next 2 months and also be praying
for reentry back into the States. God’s ministry through me will not stop once
I get back, but I will have the opportunity to speak into lots of other
people’s lives and walks. Also, be praying for God to show me the next step in
my journey!
